In providing communications-related services to customers, such as satellite-based communications services, occasionally outages occur. In some environments, outages are first determined by customer complaints to the communication service provider. Then, personnel from the communication service provider can receive complaints about outages, typically via telephone calls to customer service call centers, and determine whether the complaints are related to environmental conditions, failures in customer equipment, such as set-top boxes, or failures in equipment controlled by the communication service provider.
Part of this determination about outages can depend on testing performed on the customer equipment. Example testing includes testing which signals are received and sent by the customer equipment, and signal strength testing for received and/or sent signals. In some networks, signal integrity tests are performed. Traditional methods of signal integrity testing can involve establishing test stations in a distribution area that perform signal tests and running signal integrity tests at the time of set-top box installation. These traditional methods are costly, time-consuming, do not always provide suitable coverage, and/or do not provide timely coverage.